Loew eyes young­sters for Con­fed Cup

GER­MANY coach Joachim Loew is aim­ing to blood some younger play­ers at next year’s Con­fed­er­a­tions Cup with an eye on de­fend­ing the World Cup in 2018.

“I would like to use the Con­fed­er­a­tions Cup as a tour­na­ment based on the fu­ture,” said Loew, hint­ing that some of his se­nior play­ers would be rested for the com­pe­ti­tion.

“For the Con­fed­er­a­tions Cup, not all our play­ers will be avail­able. That’s why I see that tour­na­ment based on the fu­ture, one in which I’ll be able to bring in young play­ers.”

Loew has al­ready brought in three in­ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers who lost to Brazil on penal­ties in the fi­nal of the Rio Olympics for to­mor­row’s friendly against Fin­land and World Cup qual­i­fier against Nor­way in Oslo on Sun­day. At­tack­ing mid­field­ers Ju­lian Brandt (Bayer Lev­erkusen) and Max Meyer (Schalke 04), and Hof­fen­heim de­fender Nik­las Suele “will def­i­nitely have the chance of play­ing Wed­nes­day”, Loew said. The Moenchenglad­bach runout against the Finns will be Manch­ester United re­ject Bas­tian Sch­we­in­steiger’s 121st – and fi­nal – ap­pear­ance for die Mannschaft. For his swan­song, Sch­we­in­steiger will cap­tain the side against Fin­land, Loew say­ing he would name his cap­tain for Nor­way on Thurs­day, goal­keeper Manuel Neuer hav­ing worn the skip­per’s arm­band dur­ing the Euro­pean cham­pi­onships. “I want to first speak with the team, I want to an­nounce it to them,” he said. “I’ve al­ready made my decision. I’ll tell you it af­ter the match against Fin­land.” — AFP

South Africa’s sec­ond wicket of the day, via their sec­ond suc­cess­ful re­view. With Mitchell Sant­ner in­side-edg­ing Phi­lan­der onto his stumps shortly be­fore lunch, and Doug Bracewell and Tim Southee fall­ing within six overs of each other af­ter the break, New Zealand were 169 for 8.

Rabada, reg­u­larly clock­ing 150kph, dis­com­fited Wag­ner with a se­ries of bounc­ers, one of which took the edge of his bat and lobbed to sec­ond slip via his shoul­der. How­ever, re­plays in­di­cated Rabada had over­stepped. There­after, Wag­ner changed tack from wear­ing blows to all-out at­tack, and heaved three fours and a six in the space of five Steyn de­liv­er­ies to hurry New Zealand past 200.

He kept play­ing the pull, and even­tu­ally, one took his lead­ing edge on the way to de Kock and Steyn duly di­rected Wag­ner back to the dress­ing room. Wil­liamson was last man out in the next over, top-edg­ing a pull just as Wag­ner had done. — Cricinfo